In a lot of cases, one way of looking at an exhibition is as a site where chaos -- ideas, emotions, imagination, truths, etc -- is sorted out and made sense of through a curatorial process.
In "Rewind To The Next", Practical Design Studio's debut exhibition at The Jam Factory Gallery, however, chaos makes up only a small part of the whole; the rest is all rationality, the works on display meticulously and systematically constructed.
As the exhibition title "Rewind To The Next" gives out, this show is about looking back at where they have come from and pondering, after 12 years in the business, where they go from here. Meandering through the art space is like gaining access to these designers' studios, where we see them going from scratch to finished product.
To demonstrate how they "design a method on how to design", the team goes back to the initial step with which a two-dimensional form is made: putting one line together with another.
This is illustrated in the roughly 40 sketches of grids drawn based on the ratio frame derived from the Fibonacci sequence (the form of which is strikingly similar to that of the golden ratio). Put on display on one wall, these grids -- whether made of the repetition of vertical and horizontal lines criss-crossing one another, or curving lines projecting from various angles -- were produced collaboratively by the team, and they serve as a point of departure for the series of works on display.
The series "Emptiness To Nothingness", for example, is demonstrated by a video installation that shows, after more than 40 types of grids are put on top of one another, the white, empty space finally -- after all the lines have merged -- turning completely black. In World, on a huge panel, a world map has suddenly turned somewhat geometric and pixilated, the shapes of the countries and their borders no longer the same. Again, this results from applying a couple grids as an underlying pattern, distorting and manipulating the map accordingly.
The same technique is also applied to the "Thailands" series. Each of the 16 versions of the Thailand map is coupled with different grid patterns, resulting in 16 forms -- minimalist, surrealist, impressionist, and so on -- of a map of Thailand.
Rather than "an art exhibition", Practical Design Studio co-founder and design director Kanoknuch Sillapawisawakul prefers to describe it as a space where creativity is exhibited, where the working process by the studio is simulated and laid bare, and viewers are welcome to take something out of it and develop it further themselves.
Even though the works are impressive aesthetically, one realises aesthetics is by no means the main purpose, but a welcome by-product. In the photography series "Gesture", for instance, we see yet another possibility that those grids can take them. Collaborating with Bangkok City Ballet, the studio's designers had ballet dancers make movements corresponding to their grids. The result is a series of fleeting movements caught by photography which you think improvisational but in fact is systematically choreographed.
In many cases, putting design works in an art space tends to immediately rid the pieces of their original labels, and we recognise them as art. Here is different, because no longer is there a sense of mystery on the artist's part. Where did that line come from? Or: Why those shapes? In short, the whole affair is very organised and explainable -- every shape and line can be traced back to their very beginning.
The experience of seeing "Rewind To The Next" can be described as very much "guided" and "regulated", but this is not necessarily meant in a negative way. This is one of those rare occasions when the artist in the exhibition is naked and giving, and everything that's laid bare is meant to not only be seen but taken away.
"Rewind To The Next" is on display at The Jam Factory Gallery, Khlong San, until July 3.
Photograph from the 'Gesture' series.
